Innovation, Invention, Creativity and the thin line – Part 1

Well, the school and colleges were already buzzed with these three words and perhaps now a decade after, when the Indian industries have put a giant step forward towards the global economy, these three words are flowing just as the news of Hollywood’s who n who.

Now Indian companies reputation as a service provider is well known across the world. The "atithi devo bhave" cliché has become synonymous to the service providing nation. But the big question is when will the Indian industries will start establishing themselves as a product based companies rather than cheap(in terms of rate) labor service provider. i think the buzz around is quite reflective of call of future for Indian industries.

We talk about these to words a lot but have we ever tried to think what these three words mean. Are they synonymous to each other or there is a thin line between them. I just took the help of Google (meanwhile was wondering whether Google search engine is an innovative product or a example creative par excellence). What amazed me most was 1000's of different definitions that were available on net. It not only reflected different interpretation of different people on these two terms but also that my confusion was not stand out. If we need to so some innovation or creativity we need to damn clear on this or at least we should be aware what we need to do before we proceed on how to do it.

Creativity: Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. Although popularly associated with art and literature, it is also an essential part of innovation and invention and is important in professions such as business, economics, architecture, industrial design, and science and engineering.

Invention: An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty. An invention may sometimes be based on earlier developments, collaborations or ideas, and the process of invention requires at least the awareness that an existing concept or method that can be modified or transformed into an invention. Although a new or usefulb object or method may be developed to fulfill a specific purpose, the original idea may never be fully realized as a working invention, perhaps because the concept is in some way unrealistic or impractical. A "castle in the air" or a "pie in the sky" (or "castles in Spain") may refer to a creative idea which does not reach fruition due to practical considerations. The history of invention is full of such castles, because inventions are not necessarily invented in the order that is most useful.

Innovation: Innovation has been studied in a variety of contexts, including in relation to technology, commerce, social systems, economic development, and policy construction. There are, therefore, naturally a wide range of approaches to conceptualizing innovation in the scholarly literature. However, a consistent theme that exits is innovation is typically understood as the introduction of something new and useful, for example introducing new methods, techniques, or practices or new or altered products and services. It is also thought to be as "the successful exploitation of new ideas " by Department of Trade and Industry, UK) or “change that creates a new dimension of performance” by Peter Drucker. A more clear and concise definition is a “creative idea that is realized” by HBS. So innovation is not idea, not a new product but it is the implementation or successful exploitation of the inventions.



For simple understating refer to the flow diagram below

Fig: Flow chart for Creativity, invention and innovation

The diagram also states that out of n creative idea's that come across minds only are n-m invented due to technological, human motivation, resource limitations and n-m-x are innovated as many inventions are not for practical or societal usage.

In the next series of the innovation, creativity and invention i will just try to figure out why and what reasons lead to n-m-x innovation from n ideas in detail.